Thursday, August 26, 2010

I am leaving Michigan this weekend for several weeks to work in Atlanta. The job is very short term likely lasting only two to four weeks. I want to see a Braves' game, might visit the zoo, and, if the opportunity arises, I'll flip off that socialist tyrant wannabe Ted Turner and that Marxist hag wife of his.

I have been told that I will have access to a computer but I seriously doubt I'll do much blogging--what with my spare time already divided between geriatric fisticuffs and the frequent application of a glistening sheen of soothing Aloe Vera. Hey, I burn! (Besides, it ain't like I'm doing much blogging these days anyway.)

Take a wild guess as to which city in the world ranks number one in murder.

Is it in a war zone or one that experiences frequent bombings? Is it a city like Detroit or Chicago that has for years suffered from American decline? Is it a city torn apart by drugs or racial divides?

Or is it a budding social paradise but waiting on the anointed Leader to get his entire agenda into place?

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Is broadband access in rural Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula worth spending $81 billion borrowed Chinese dollars when we already have over $100 trillion in debt and unfunded mandates sitting on the books?

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

We have become a country where the speaker too often has lost the upper hand to the interpreter. That is, what we say and what me mean has become irrelevant to people who are willing to, in bad faith, misinterpret what is being communicated so that the interpreter can vilify the speaker for what he or she never uttered.

It is this sad state of affairs that allowed John Wiley Price the platform from which to call a fellow Dallas County Commissioner a racist for using the term "black hole" in a meeting.

This is how Bill Bennett was attacked for supposedly championing eugenics when he did no such thing, how Rush Limbaugh was attacked for his racism when he is no racist, and how the use of the word niggardly can be reason enough to get a person excoriated. None of these well documented situations in any way signify a racist attitude on the part of the speaker, yet mean spirited interpreters were allowed to completely twist the words of the utterer into a misshapen dialog that was then used as a reason to attack the speaker.

The results of such verbal acrobatics is a stifling of honest debate on a topic that, as Eric Holder wass quick to point out, we are cowards for not addressing.

SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.

I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing. Don’t hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don’t go away.

Is this the type of conversation that Eric Holder was calling for when he accused us of cowardice on race relations?

I think it is. And yet, Schlesinger is being pilloried. She is not being attacked for the intent of her comments but rather because she is a conservative and, because of her card-carrying inclusion within that group, her comments are being intentionally misinterpreted to expose an erstwhile unknown latent hostility toward blacks.

Charges of racism are used more often to silence well-intentioned non racists than they are to expose and attack true racists.

Schlesinger is packing in her radio show over the incident effective at the end of the year (if protesters don't get her sacked prior to that time.) Hey, that is the free market and if protesters can influence businesses through withholding money to advertisers, more power to them.

If we are ever going to arrive at a post-racial society we'd all better learn to listen honestly to what other people have to say. Otherwise Eric Holder will have every reason to point his finger at us again in the future.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

I jumped to conclusions, for when I heard that Carl Levin had been attacked by a pie-wielding protester in Michigan, I assumed that it had been one of those crazed right-wing zealots that we hear so much about.

You know the ones. The ones that shout racial epitaphs at black congressmen. The ones that deliver death threats to politicians. The ones that spit. The ones that mean spiritedly call for Muslims to forgo their plans to build a mosque of triumph on the same plot of land where the landing gear of Mohammad Atta's plane came tumbling down.

Then I discovered the truth.

Hmmmm.

Maybe Ahlam M. Mohsen should build a pie stand in a dark corner of the Pepper's Cafe and Deli.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Jesse Jackson has been lobbying for good urban economic conditions for decades. He has battled for the little man, for the common man, for the disadvantaged man, for the union man, for the frustrated man. During those same decades, however, for all the sweat that has evaporated from his furrowed brow he has done nothing but promote destined to fail economic policies that have predictably resulted in crumbling urban islands devoid of plausible hope.

He is at it again in advance of his appearance in the Motor City on August 28th. The appearance will include speeches, a march, and an attempt to once again expound on his beliefs--as if Americans hadn't already tired of having their noses rubbed into the underbelly of Detroit's urban decay.

The march marks the launch of the "Rebuild America" campaign, which aims to convince national leaders to enact policy that will promote the skills and talent of workers.

"With The Big Three, we've gone from making cars to shuffling cars," Jackson told the television station. "And the impact of that of course is massive unemployment, maybe three times the national average."

There are a number of things that we can expect Jackson to say. America's corporations are driven by greed. A small number of Americans are controlling more and more of the nation's wealth. America is largely racist. The American Dream is being denied to city dwellers through poor education, poor city services, and poor national planning.

A theme that we can confidently believe will not be addressed is how "national leaders" have made it difficult for corporations and other businesses to operate profitably in a global marketplace and how these same leaders and their minions have created atmospheres in which corporations are forced to flee across city, state, and national borders in order to remain viable and survive.

As a brazen socialist and anti-capitalist, Jesse Jackson is unwilling to fathom that wealth is not a naturally occurring resource. He is unwilling to believe that the major difference between the extravagantly wealthy and the miserably poor is not just dumb luck.

Businesses that lose money do not create jobs. Businesses that must work inefficiently in order to comply with crippling work rules and regulations are unable to compete on even terms with companies that are not so encumbered.

Businesses that make decisions on where to locate or expand must make those decisions not based solely on today's conditions, but must also consider the future decisions of 'national leaders' who routinely prostitute themselves in order to pack polling precincts on election night. They must weigh the future costs of mandated health care, retirement plans, family leave acts, punitive environmental regulations, zoning, tort run amok, union belligerence, Jennifer Granholm's green economy, and localized crime.

Jesse Jackson has an eye keen enough to detect the never ending and symptomatic oozing boil of poor economic policy, yet he is either incapable of diagnosing the disease behind the pock or too invested in his career of poverty pimping to care one way or the other.

One of my fondest memories of childhood involved the summertime collection of monarch butterfly caterpillars and observing them as they grew, turned into chrysalises, and then later hatched. It was a mesmerizing experience watching each stately monarch break free of its pupae prison and slowly stretch out to become one of the world's most beautiful and colorful insects.

In the world of creepy crawlers a monarch butterfly could easily counterbalance the existence any ugly spider or odoriferous stink bug.

During the past several weeks I've been revisiting this childhood joy. I've been watching a half dozen milkweeds near my yard in hopes of spotting an early monarch caterpillar. I was thrilled when about ten days ago I noticed several of the gluttonous caterpillars.

Nearly every day since then I've walked to the milkweed patch to witness the caterpillars' progress. I found several more smaller ones during my subsequent visits that were almost impossible to detect--meanwhile, the original ones grew longer and fatter.

That was until yesterday. Before church I sauntered over to the driveway to visit my new friends. Every single one of the caterpillars had either disappeared altogether or was laying there dead.

Attached to two of the caterpillar corpses were several weevils who had punctured the caterpillar hides with their long ooze-sucking snouts. The caterpillars were deader than doornails and turning black.

I had always thought that monarch caterpillars were more or less protected from predators. By eating almost exclusively milkweed they bloated themselves on the white sap of the weed which is bitter, sticky and poisonous. This might come as a shock to Rougblog readers, but I had thought wrong.

There were at least two different types of weevils burrowed into the bodies of the caterpillars. Being a Christian, and this being a Sunday, I crushed the little bastards with a rock.

The next time I find healthy caterpillars near my house I'm going to collect them and put them in glass jars like I did when I was young. When they safely hatch they can fly free to lay eggs on milkweeds hopefully not infested with weevils.

I did some quick research on monarch predators and found that they are often the prey of wasps and birds. I did not find any accounts of weevils being the culprits.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Who was really shocked at our President's endorsement of the proposed 9-11 mosque and community center near Ground Zero? The proposed structure is to be called Cordoba in recognition of an historical Islamic conquest.

"We must all recognise and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan, Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground. But let me be clear, as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practise their religion as anyone else in this country.

"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are."

He told the group of US Congressmen, government officials and foreign dignitaries that America's tradition of religious tolerance distinguishes it from "our enemies".

"Al-Qaeda's cause is not Islam," he said, "it is a gross distortion of Islam".

In one respect I agree with Obama. I believe that the organization behind the mosque's construction has the legal right to build their monument to religious conquest on the same ground where the ashes of 9-11 victims settled.

But, should they do it, and more importantly, should we allow it to take place without loudly pronouncing that we understand completely what this project is ultimately all about and without lodging a strong moral protest against it?

Apparently Mr. Obama thinks so. We are not to say that "true" Muslims should erect their new mosque at a different location in the city. We are not to say out loud that the leadership behind the mosque's erection are being totally insensitive to the families of those who were murdered and to all American citizens who saw their country attacked for no reason other than Islam has failed through the centuries to purge itself of ravenous dickheads dedicated to murdering all of those who believe differently than they do--be they Christian, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, westerner, easterner, atheist, agnostic, homosexual, infidel, Sufi, Shiite, Sunni, Virgo or Gemini.

I do not believe that we can legally keep worshipers of Allah from building this mosque in NYC. I do, however, believe that we should do everything that we possibly can to convince the Muslim supporters of the project that they should not go forward.

Obama's mewling does nothing to send this message.

No politician should support the building of the mosque. No bureaucrat should grease the skids. No construction worker should agree to work on its foundation. No citizen should stand idly by as the walls go up.

Muslims celebrated in dozens of countries around the world as the towers fell, and those same ones will be giddy with delight if this mosque is ever built.

This is not a religious freedom issue. No one has ever understood the freedom of religion as granting an untrammeled license to build any structure anywhere, as long as it's religious. If the KKK announced plans to build a shrine at the site of the 16th Street Baptist Church, would Obama be talking about religious freedom?

If I were forced to hazard a guess I would say that this will never occur. I think that the project will ultimately prove to be too difficult for the planners to pull off. Being sensitive to the religions of others does not mean that we have to be patsies. We do not have to cower in front of those who want to subjugate us.

In an effort to trim back my personal finances amid the ruins of Michigan's Granholm depression, I made the difficult decision of canceling my internet account. I wisely discerned that I still had internet access at my on-again off-again employer and since I was already spending too much time jabbering about control freak socialists wanting to control my every movement for the purpose of making my life more healthy and enjoyable, I could afford some time away.

Alas, I have finally come to what should have been an obvious conclusion six weeks ago when I made that move of pure genius--that conducting a job search without internet access is next to impossible.

I suppose I should be thankful to progressive visionaries such as Al Gore who were so instrumental in developing our world wide web. At least with the 'tubes we victims of the economy that the likes of Gore worked so hard to create and sustain (Go Cap and Trade!) are able to seek out work in locations far away from the children we love, raised, and are loathe to leave.

In other excellent news, in the six weeks I was separated from my dial up account I saved about $18. To get reconnected to the internet I had to pay a reconnect fee of $15.